About Mundo Mendo
Welcome to my walled garden. I am Luis Mendo, a Spanish visual artist based in Tokyo. I've built this membership construct to publish my best work and make books with it.
Mundo Mendo is an independent publication platform, launched on October 1st, 2024. It’s both a way for fans to support my work and it provides a safe space for me to share what I truly want to be making. After a while all the work shall be bundled into a BOOK SERIES.
The Mundo Mendo Book series
After a year or two of creating stuff, I expect to have enough on this site and then some. My idea is to publish everything in physical form as small books. It's too early to decide how those will look like, but ideally I am thinking of small volumes that fit in a box set to collect and protect them properly. Bold Members get 20% discount on these too.
Access all areas
By signing up and choosing a membership tier, you'll get access to the full archive of everything that's been published before and all still to come until your subscription runs out. It's your own private Luis Mendo library: you get full access to the website, as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available.
If you chose a Bold subscription, you will enjoy a 20% discount on my Print shop, my digital zines, the Tokyo y Yo book english edition, AND the Mundo Mendo books when they come out.
You will get notified
I will be keep you up to date of new content via your inbox. No need to worry about whether you missed something because of a pesky algorithm or oppressive news feed. Also, no more doomscrolling to find something you like. You can expect about a couple of emails per month.
POSSE
In order to stay independent and be free from the grip of social media silos, this site is built around the POSSE (‘publish on your site, syndicate elsewhere’) model. Mandy Brown has a good piece about her approach to this, which I share and encourage others to consider.
Manifesto
The Need for a Walled Garden
Considering we have access to the most powerful tools for art making and art sharing in the history of humanity, we could to be doing a better use of it…With Mundo Mendo I am hoping to create an alternative for other illustrators and image makers.
Jumping off the machine
By sharing my work on this website, I am trying to step out of this zero-sum game: Mundo Mendo runs on Ghost, which is a non-profit organization. They are open source, independent, and funded 100% by its users. No investors and no bullshit.
Hiding things behind a paywall you have some protection against AI bots stealing your work.
For the happy few
Mundo Mendo is made only for a handful of fans. Most probably it’s going to be a tiny group, but at least I know I can count on their eyes and their hearts.
The value of what I make
With Mundo Mendo I would like to give the value back to the work; it's my hope that readers do not scroll dismissively away, but rejoice looking at things longer than they would to an Instagram post.
Honoring the craft
I have been involved with magazines, periodicals and media for all my 30+ years of professional life. But always I have been working at someone else’s restaurant and now I want to have my own place, the one where I get to decide everything: from the logo to the menu to the lamps above the tables.
That place is called Mundo Mendo.
Whether this undertaking fizzles out in a couple of months or keeps going for a long time, I can't say. But while it's alive I will put most of my labour, time and love into making it. Otherwise I shall stop.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Luis Mendo, September 2024
Credits
This website runs on Ghost CMS.
Payments are facilitated by Stripe.
Design, texts and drawings all by Luis Mendo.
Additional tech help kindly delivered by Nuno Coelho Santos.
Template used is Taste, which is meant to be used for articles about cooking and recipes. Yum.
More Luis Mendo
Portfolio • Prints Shop • Instagram • Mastodon • Threads • LinkedIn
Thank you
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